The success rate in email marketing is always low. When you think about email marketing, you often think it is to send out offers and coupons. But how many offer emails do you actually pay attention to?
To add to that, a marketing email, always comes in at an unasked for time. For instance, you might get an email about an exclusive offer for a spa. Chances are very little that you are looking for a spa deal at that very point in time. It’s low priority. And for that reason, the offer goes unused.
The reason email marketing does not work is that it is geared toward direct marketing. But think about it for a moment:
- What if you use email marketing for branding? High quality – valuable content.
- What if you can get a chance to talk to your customers?
- What if you can tell your customers it’s not all about money? We really love you and want to make your day.
A NEW PURPOSE FOR EMAIL MARKETING
The purpose of email marketing should be – to create conversation. In fact, any marketing effortsshould be geared toward creating meaningful conversations.
Here are a few alternative purposes we did with a local client with about 1200 customers. The purpose was to engage them emotionally with our brand and truly provide them with a value add.
SMILE BREAK
Subject line : Spiritually Incorrect – Osho on “F” word
Result
The subject line encouraged 65% of our customers to open the email.
17% of our customers sent us comments around it through emails.
WOW BREAK
Subject line : Susan Boyle – Britan’s got talent
Result
68% of our customers watched the video.
4% of our customers sent us comments.
INSPIRING BREAK
Subject Line: Live your dream – Robin Sharma
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6x1ddBJ3kiY
Result
82% of our customers watched the video.
28% reverted with suggestions on more such videos.
EMOTIONAL BREAK
Subject Line: Be human – My respect for these sportsmen
http://youtu.be/0PyA5d6Gb_8
Result
74% of our customers watched the video.
As of this writing, we’ve sent more than 75 emails on different themes. Look at the number of people who watch and respond. This is dramatic. This happens because you are trying to give more to your customers. They are now tightly bound to your messages and look forward to them. To add to it, you don’t have to create content; simply curate it.
Now when we have an announcement, most people read it. We’ve just made email marketing a powerful tool to connect emotionally with our customers.
WHAT TOOL DO WE USE FOR EMAIL MARKETING?
After quick research, we realized email marketing should be simple. We needed something much less sophisticated that still does the job well. We came across Optyn. It does not even have template customizations. It’s that simple.
It has one standard template which allows us to send quality content in less than two minutes. All we need to do is find content on the web that could be valuable to our customers, and poof it goes.
If you want to use email marketing to connect emotionally with your customers, certainly try something similar to Optyn (a simple, less expensive tool). Also, we realized that since we always have this one template, people sort of get used to it and know what to do – click on the link. Here is a sample of how it looks:
Feel free to reach out to me to learn more about how can you design content for your customer base that will truly engage them with your brand.
Happy email marketing!